Open Access Policies

Open access policies are adopted by research institutions, funding agencies, or governments. Generally, they require authors (e.g., faculty or grant recipients) to deposit the postprints (post peer review versions of articles) of their published journal articles in an open access repository, institutional (e.g., eScholarship) or discipline specific repository (e.g., PubMed). Below is information on open access policies of interest to UC authors. For assistance meeting the requirements of an open access policy, please consult with a Scholarly Communication Librarian.

Open Access Policies of Interest to UC Authors

On July 24, 2013, the Academic Council voted to adopt an Open Access Policy for Scholarly articles published by Senate faculty across the UC system. The California Digital Library and campus libraries are responsible for the implementation. The UCSB campus contact for the Policy is barnes [at] library [dot] ucsb [dot] edu (Sherri L. Barnes). She is available to address questions and concerns, and to give brief presentations at department meetings.

The NIH Public Access Policy ensures that the public has access to the published results of NIH funded research. It requires scientists to submit final peer-reviewed journal manuscripts that arise from NIH funds to the digital archive PubMed Centralupon acceptance for publication. To help advance science and improve human health, the Policy requires that these papers are accessible to the public on PubMed Central no later than 12 months after publication.

Beginning January 18, 2011, proposals submitted to NSF must include a supplementary document of no more than two pages labeled “Data Management Plan.” This supplementary document should describe how the proposal will conform to NSF policy on the dissemination and sharing of research results.

Directories of Worldwide Open Access Policies

“To maximise the dissemination of the research they fund, the grant conditions of funding organisations increasingly require peer-reviewed research outputs to be made freely available to the public in full at the earliest possible date. These aims can be achieved either by archiving publications in an Open Access repository, or by publishing in an Open Access publication” (Juliet web page).

Juliet shows policies relating to open access publishing and data archiving from a variety of governmental and private funding agencies from around the world.